Dr Daniel Chapman

Current work

Modelling the European invasion of ragweed: Ragweed (Ambrosia artemisiifolia) is invading Europe after being imported from North America as a seed lot contaminant. Where established, its highly allergenic wind-borne pollen makes ragweed a prime cause of hay fever, with serious socio-economic impacts. I am involved in an EC-funded project to simulate its ongoing invasion and impact, under alternate scenarios of climate and land use change, as well as control scenarios. The project will couple a habitat suitability model to a metapopulation range dynamics model to simulate spread. Projections of ragweed’s future distributions will then be linked to the SILAM pollen transport and air quality forecasting system (collaboration with the Finnish Meteorological Institute) to predict the severity of its impacts across Europe.

Species distribution modelling: Distribution modelling (also known as bioclimate envelope modelling) aims to understand how environmental factors, such as climate, determine species’ ranges. The models are often used to predict biodiversity impacts of climate change, habitat loss or changes in management. My work tries to improve current approaches by, for example, addressing statistical issues with these models and developing new methods for modelling whole ecological communities. I am also interested in how species’ functional traits influence their range structure and sensitivity to environmental change.

Spatial ecology of Himalayan balsam: Himalayan balsam (Impatiens glandulifera) is a well known and vigorous invader of European riverbanks. I have developed spatially-explicit individual-based models to simulate its invasion dynamics and test the efficacy of alternative control strategies. To develop the model I conducted experiments investigating the effects of shading and crowding on its growth and reproduction, and parameterised and validated a mechanistic model of its ballistic seed dispersal. Through a NERC-funded PhD studentship under my supervision, Cathy Fiedler is investigating its impacts on native plant and pollinator communities. We aim to determine how effects on bee behaviour and community structure at both very local and wider spatial scales affect the reproduction of native plants.

Brief CV

• Plant Community Ecologist (CEH 2008-now)
• Postdoctoral Research Assistant on the ‘Sustainable Uplands’ project (University of Leeds 2006-2008)
• PhD, ‘Spatial ecology of the endangered tansy beetle’, (University of York, 2006)
• MRes Ecology and Environmental Management (University of York, 2003)
• BA (Hons) Natural Sciences, Part II Zoology (Cambridge University, 2000)

Research interests

• Spatial ecology of plants, including metacommunity approaches
• Seed dispersal and its effects on population and community dynamics
• Modelling the spread and control of invasive plants
• Linking data from fieldwork with models to understand ecological phenomena

Selected publications

Chapman D.S. & Purse B.V. (in press). Community versus single-species distribution models for British plants. Journal of Biogeography.

Powney G.D., Roy D.B., Chapman D. & Oliver T.H. (in press). Measuring functional connectivity using long term monitoring data. Methods in Ecology and Evolution.

Powney G.D., Roy D.B., Chapman D. & Oliver T.H. (2010). Synchrony of butterfly populations across species' geographic ranges. Oikos, 119, 1690-1696.

Chapman D.S. (2010). Weak climatic associations among British plant distributions. Global Ecology and Biogeography, 19, 831-841.

Chapman D.S., Bonn A., Kunin W.E. & Cornell S.J. (2010). Random Forest characterization of upland vegetation and management burning from aerial imagery. Journal of Biogeography, 37, 37-46.

Thapa S. & Chapman D.S. (2010). Impacts of resource extraction on forest structure and diversity in Bardia National Park, Nepal. Forest Ecology and Management, 259, 641-649.

Chapman D.S., Cornell S.J. & Kunin W.E. (2009). Interactions between harvesting, noise and territoriality in a model of red grouse population cycles. Journal of Animal Ecology, 78, 476-484.

Chapman D.S., Oxford G.S. & Dytham C. (2009). Process from pattern in the distribution of an endangered leaf beetle. Ecography, 32, 259-268.

Chapman D.S., Termansen M., Quinn C.H., Jin N.L., Bonn A., Cornell S.J., Fraser E.D.G., Hubacek K., Kunin W.E. & Reed M.S. (2009). Modelling the coupled dynamics of moorland management and upland vegetation. Journal of Applied Ecology, 46, 278-288.

Chapman D.S., Dytham C. & Oxford G.S. (2007). Landscape and fine-scale movements of a leaf beetle: The importance of boundary behaviour. Oecologia, 154, 55-64.

Chapman D.S., Dytham C. & Oxford G.S. (2007). Modelling population redistribution in a leaf beetle: an evaluation of alternative dispersal functions. Journal of Animal Ecology, 76, 36-44.